


Landscape of Your Skin

by Uncle Asad (Uncle_Asad)



Series: The Model and the Painter [1]
Category: Legacies (TV 2018)
Genre: :-(, All 3 Machados get name-checked, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Artists, F/F, Hayley - Klaus - Caroline and Alaric all have died, I really don’t know what else I should be tagging here, In a manner of speaking, Lizzie has a background storyline but doesn’t really appear, Modeling, Nudity, Painting, Sensuality, Smut without sex?, So do Landon - Roman - Alyssa, So does Rebekah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-20 14:08:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30006060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Uncle_Asad/pseuds/Uncle%20Asad
Summary: Josie Saltzman lay on the bed in the studio of renowned artist Hope Mikaelson. A draft seeping through the old windows and worn doors of the warehouse that housed the studio sent a chill up her body, from her yellow-painted toes, up her spine, through her chest, all the way to her nose. She felt lucky that she wasn’t covered in goosebumps, considering. She was, after all, completely naked.Or, Josie’s a model and Hope’s a painter who is creating a painting that’s been haunting her dreams.
Relationships: Hope Mikaelson/Josie Saltzman
Series: The Model and the Painter [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2219208
Comments: 7
Kudos: 73





	Landscape of Your Skin

**Author's Note:**

> So…this is so far outside of my wheelhouse it may as well be on the other coast, and likewise well beyond my comfort zone. (So don’t expect more of this sort of tale.) But like Hope, this painting appeared in my dreams earlier this week and I haven’t been able to purge it from my head, no matter how much I tried. Maybe putting it on the page, so to speak, will work? Apologies, though, if it starts haunting _your_ dreams now 😢
> 
> Needless to say, everyone is above 18 in this story, and everything is consensual.

Josie Saltzman lay on the bed in the studio of renowned artist Hope Mikaelson. A draft seeping through the old windows and worn doors of the warehouse that housed the studio sent a chill up her body, from her yellow-painted toes, up her spine, through her chest, all the way to her nose. She felt lucky that she wasn’t covered in goosebumps, considering. She was, after all, completely naked.

§

Josie lay on the bed nearly flat on her back, with only a slight angle to her hips and a pillow underneath her head…and she wondered, pondered, how she came to be in this situation.

Josie felt that in another world, she was destined for so much more. A world where her mother hadn’t died mysteriously and her father hadn’t eventually drank himself into an early grave. Perhaps she would have gotten that degree in feminist literature and would be running her own bookstore/plant shop combination like she had dreamed when she was younger. Instead, she had become a statistic—one of those girls who said they did modeling work to pay for their classes but never ended up finishing their degree as their modeling career took off and then faded into obscurity at the ripe old age of 30. At least that’s what she feared.

Josie had accompanied her twin sister (“fraternal, obvs”) to a fashion show Lizzie was working and had been discovered by a scout. Hooray for Lizzie’s styling efforts? Lizzie had obtained a coveted entry-level position with designer Rebekah Mikaelson and was working for her, eschewing a degree entirely, but Josie was still trying to live her dreams in spite of everything—and college was expensive when your father drank away your entire college fund and whatever money he had to his name that would have been your inheritance when he’d finally drank himself to death. So she’d signed with the agency the scout represented, worked dozens of forgettable jobs that first year, but then walked for Rebekah Mikaelson (Lizzie’s whispers certainly helped, but the fact was, she looked so damn good in yellow, and that was the central color of that year’s collection) after only a year in the business, becoming a name—albeit perhaps just a minor one—in the process. Soon after, the jobs that were supposed to be paying for her classes were getting in the way of her classes, or vice versa, and Josie put her education, and her dreams, on hold.

That was how she found herself in the studio of the famous painter Hope Mikaelson that early autumn day. (And completely naked.) At least part of the reason.

§

Hope Mikaelson’s mother had died when she was young. Her father remarried—his true love, the one that got away, whatever you wanted to call it—in part to ensure that his beloved daughter had a mother figure in her life as she grew up. Niklaus Mikaelson was a renowned painter in his own right—or would have been if anyone other than family had seen his work. He taught Hope everything she knew about art and painting, from history to techniques to making her own paints from nature’s own colors. He and his wife doted upon Hope, but never spoiled her. The Mikaelson family fortune had been squandered by his siblings (and, to be honest, a few of Klaus’s own failed business ventures), so they were poor, but happy.

When her father died unexpectedly from a heart attack, the courts decided Hope should remain with her stepmother. Hope loved her aunt, but, well, she was flighty and currently trying to start her own fashion line, so she wouldn’t have the time she needed to devote to Hope. The young Mikaelson was old enough to understand, and she also preferred not to be ripped from another mother, so staying with Caroline was truly the best situation, Hope believed. The two moved from New Orleans back to Caroline’s home town, Mystic Falls, Virginia, which was an adjustment, but it was something that helped occupy them both during their grief.

Unfortunately for Hope, Caroline died in a freak accident only a few years afterwards, and the Virginia courts decided that Hope should go live with Caroline’s ex-husband and their daughters. Hope didn’t know her stepsisters well; Alaric had insisted that he be given primary custody of the girls in order for Caroline to marry Klaus. He was an ass—a drunken one, at that—but Hope thought, this one time, he was not entirely unreasonable, seeing as her father had nearly killed Alaric several times before she and the twins were born (they had been professional rivals in their younger days, and the rivalry had been brutal). So at age 17, Hope had found herself living with the alcoholic Alaric Saltzman and his nearly-16-year-old twin daughters, Elizabeth and Josette.

They were like oil and water at first, all resentful of each other and their new situation. When Hope saved the twins’ Sweet Sixteen party after Alaric nearly ruined it in a drunken stupor, however, the ice began to thaw, and slowly the three sisters began to bond over their sad situation. When Hope graduated, her aunts and uncles cobbled together enough money to get her started at SCAD, so she left Mystic Falls for Savannah. Shortly after the twins graduated, Alaric collapsed one day; apparently he had pickled all of his major organs, and he left the girls with nothing but debts, which they sold the house to cover. Josie had gotten a partial scholarship to NYU, so she and Lizzie headed off to New York to share a broom closet in an apartment with the Machado twins, Ethan and Maya, children of Alaric’s sometime-girlfriend.

About that time, Rebekah Mikaelson exploded onto the New York fashion scene, Lizzie got a job working for her, took Josie to the fashion show, and the rest was history. Hope graduated from SCAD and moved to New York, setting up a studio in an old warehouse that had been (barely) converted to studios for various elements of the artistic community. Auntie Bex (as her niece called Rebekah) commissioned Hope to create backdrop artwork for one of her shows, and soon the young painter was a rising star as well. After a few years with Rebekah’s fashion house, Lizzie left to create her own line, Jenna Lucas, and of course Josie walked the line’s first show (closing it, naturally), while Hope alternately cheered from the front row and held Lizzie’s hand backstage to calm her down.

Now well into their twenties, the three women had done well, considering the hardships they had endured growing up. Each had a career on the rise, and this autumn day, Hope was trying a bold new painting project.

§

After a few more minutes of Josie waiting, Hope burst into the room, hair, jacket, and bags flying, looking not entirely unlike an auburn-haired Tasmanian Devil. She dropped her bags and walked over to her bed, leaning down to press her lips to Josie’s. “Sorry I’m late. Landon and Roman got into a fight with Alyssa again.”

“Hope, I keep telling you you need to find those mutts a new home. They just can’t handle the big city,” Josie chuckled.

“But…but…they have sentimental value,” the artist pouted.

“I’m not sure reminding you of your awful ex-boyfriends counts as sentimental value, babe,” the naked, leggy model countered.

“It’s so much fun to say their names and see dogs come running.”

“Did anyone ever tell you that you’re strange?”

“You, Jo. And your sister. All. The. Time. But I’m an artist; it’s called ‘endearingly eccentric.’”

Josie chuckled again. “Keep telling yourself that, babe, and one day _you_ might believe it, but even then the rest of us never will.”

The auburnette made a face at the stark-naked model but knew the brunette had won this round. Hope scurried around the room briefly, picking up her supplies and stripping down until she was wearing only an oversized, unbuttoned button-up blue shirt splattered with paint. “Are you ready, Jo?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be to become my girlfriend’s canvas.”

“Thank you so much for agreeing to do this.”

“The things we do for art,” Josie snorted gently. “The things we do for the girl we love.”

§

Hope set to work. She had a vision for the work—it had been haunting her, in fact, since it had come to her in a dream last week, and she hadn’t been able to get it out of her mind. So, finally, she relented and asked Josie if the model would let Hope paint on her, and her girlfriend surprised her by saying yes. Josie was never known as the adventurous one—that was always Lizzie—but maybe her modeling career had loosened her up a little. Still, she had made Hope give her assurances that her face would never be seen. It was one thing to be a canvas, but it was another thing to be _seen_ as a naked canvas.

Although they were legally stepsisters after Josie’s mother married Hope’s father, Hope and the twins rarely saw each other before Caroline died and Hope was assigned to Alaric’s “care” (which itself lasted only about a year until she turned 18 and graduated). So they knew each other as teens, perhaps even became friends, but never really thought of each other as sisters in the truest sense. All three had also taken pains to cast off their dark and painful younger years, to become new people in New York. So, it was…not _as weird_ as it might seem when Hope and Josie started dating in New York later on. Artist and model, the perfect cliché—or it would have been, had they not kept their relationship hidden from everyone but Lizzie; they were not ready to become a celebrity couple, or have their lives thrown open and picked apart by the world. So Hope was completely on-board with keeping Josie’s face out of the piece.

Most of Josie’s torso was soon covered in various shades of green. The brushes and the paint tickled a little, but Josie remained still, watching Hope. Watching Hope work, she meant. But maybe admiring her girlfriend’s figure swaying underneath the open oversized button-up, too. Hope normally wore _something_ , even if just leggings and a sports bra, underneath her “painting shirt,” but the artist had insisted that if she was making Josie be completely naked for painting, she would paint naked herself. Somehow the painting shirt had been a compromise; Josie wanted to make sure Hope would still be comfortable, in something familiar, to help her remain “in the zone” while creating the painting.

Hope continued her work, adding texture and detail. One area of Josie’s stomach became a meadow, filled with tiny dots of color, flowers in bloom. Her belly button found itself a deep blue, a tiny lake. As Josie’s breasts rose from her chest, the greens faded to brown and then grey, two peaks punctuating the landscape. Hope dabbed white paint over each of Josie’s nipples, capping the mountains with a perpetual hood of snow. A thin line of blue began somewhere along Josie’s right breast, falling towards her sternum and thence meandering to her belly button, where the mountain stream fed the lake. From the lake, the blue line continued toward Josie’s waist and below. Hope splashed Josie’s upper thighs with various blues, bringing the ocean to meet the land along a rocky beach, interrupted by a single triangular promontory jutting into the sea. The river finally met the sea along the far edge of the headland, in the crease where Josie’s left thigh joined her abdomen.

Back and forth to the palette Hope went as she worked, filling in details like stands of trees, piles of boulders, moraines and hairline streams. A herd of tiny deer in one region, a pack of minuscule wolves roaming another. Josie had closed her eyes, concentrating on the movements of Hope’s brushes against her skin, imagining the landscape her girlfriend was constructing. Occasionally she cracked an eye, catching Hope deep in thought as the auburnette added color to Josie’s olive skin. Sometimes her eyes dropped from Hope’s face to the features partially shielded by the open shirt, but just as quickly, Josie forced her eyes to close again and resumed her concentration on Hope’s brushwork, the gentle strokes across her skin. And steeling herself against the random drafts sweeping through the studio. Hope had covered Josie’s lower legs with another sheet to help keep the model warmer, but Josie’s pristine yellow-glazed toes peeked out from the folds of the sheet. It was a good thing that Hope was so focused on her painting, or those toes would have sent her off into an entirely different world.

Finally, after several hours of work, Hope put down her palette and brushes. Her face was splattered with flecks of paint, as was her abdomen, despite the best but constrained efforts of the open painting shirt. The artist brought out a mirror and held it opposite of Josie. “Have a look, babe,” she whispered.

Josie’s eyes fluttered open, and her mouth soon followed, hanging wide as she took in the reflection of her body. It was beautiful, breathtaking. Hope had created an idyllic landscape on her skin, stretching from the snow-capped mountains to the rocky seacoast. Josie lay in awe as she tried to take in all of the detail in the reflection, occasionally swinging her eyes towards her body directly, attempting to get a closer look. A soft “Babe…” was all that she could muster.

Hope set the mirror down and walked over to kneel next to the bed, intertwining her fingers with Josie’s and leaning in to give her girlfriend a gentle, languid kiss, careful to ensure they remained still. “Thank you so much for letting me do this, babe. I owe you. I love you.”

“Anything for you, my love,” the leggy brunette model replied. “Always and forever.”

Hope had to restrain herself from turning the single kiss into a make-out session—and more!—but she still had work to do. She got out her camera and began documenting every inch of the painting, full views and close-ups, from multiple angles, with different lighting, always careful to keep Josie’s head out of the photographs. She checked her shots on her monitor as she went along, ensuring she was capturing exactly what she intended. The auburn-haired artist mused that, unless you looked carefully, it was difficult to tell that her canvas was a body rather than, well, canvas.

As Hope appeared to be finishing up, Josie carefully worked her legs free of the sheet and then spoke softly. “Babe…will you take me one with my face showing? I…I want to have a complete memory of this experience.” Hope nodded, her breath caught in her throat, and went to grab Josie’s camera before taking a few shots, a three-quarter length as well as well as a full-body shot with those exquisite yellow-capped toes included. Josie had a soft smile on her face that faded into and out of a look of ecstasy as Hope took her final photos.

“Hope…one more thing…?” Josie entreated softly, her voice catching in her throat. “Do…do you think you can apply the fixer like you do on your other paintings? I don’t think I’m ready to lose this masterpiece just yet? I wanna wear it on me for as long as I can…” Josie pleaded, her heart racing as she made the unorthodox request of her beloved.

It was a good thing Hope had been placing Josie’s camera on the table when the model made her request, as Hope, too, found her heart racing—and her knees starting to buckle. She gripped the table and chair so hard her knuckles turned white. For a moment, all she was able to do was breathe heavily. “God, Jo, are you trying to kill me?” the artist finally managed to stumble out, her voice low and gravelly. Josie simply giggled, which made Hope’s knees go even weaker. “Yeah…” Hope finally replied huskily. “…But now maybe you owe _me_ , babe, once the painting degrades. Because I don’t know how I’m gonna be able to wait that long….”

**Author's Note:**

> Um, I hope you enjoyed this. Let me know what you thought—and please let me know if there are other tags I need to add to properly characterize it!
> 
> (There was an alternate version in my head where Hope and Josie didn’t know each other, but ultimately I decided it worked better if they did, but there are a couple of rough spots left where the differing realities intersected.)


End file.
